Fucking Fun Committee

[steph96]

I absolutely agree on not making me spend my own money (includes bringing in food) or making me spend my personal time doing stuff.

I also hate how almost all of the "fun" stuff happens during the busiest time of month. Sorry, but I don't really want to sit in a conference room with people that I hate to decorate pumpkins when I need to be doing my work!

[LoveTrains]

Aug 9, 2016 9:58:54 GMT -5 Mushe said:

Aug 9, 2016 9:25:06 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

I don't want my work to drive my philanthropy. I prefer to research my own organizations and make my own contributions. 

You do you! I have never done something controversial, but things that are relevant to our government service program.

Glad it works for your organization. I was simply pointing out that not everyone wants the fun committee to do philanthropy at work. I would much rather do the escape room, but I never considered that it might not be good for people with anxiety so I'm glad you brought that up as now I won't suggest it for my own organization. 

This is money matters after all, and many people budget their philanthropy and carefully select the organizations they support. We have heard feedback from many folks over the 10+ years I've been on this board that they don't want their organization doing united way campaigns, etc at the office where they push for 100% participation with a gift of any size. If something works for your organization, great, but I can certainly see a valid reason why some people might not appreciate the fun committee solely focusing on diaper drives, holiday gift trees, back to school backpacks, etc. Those are all fabulous causes but some people might not want to participate. If they don't, they run the risk of being judged by their colleagues. 

[andwhat]

Aug 8, 2016 11:50:00 GMT -5 @rennido said:

I am watching The Office for the first time and I just watched this episode last night. How am I just watching this? This show is hilarious.SaveSave

[Mushe]

Aug 9, 2016 10:56:41 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

Aug 9, 2016 9:58:54 GMT -5 Mushe said:

You do you! I have never done something controversial, but things that are relevant to our government service program.

Glad it works for your organization. I was simply pointing out that not everyone wants the fun committee to do philanthropy at work. I would much rather do the escape room, but I never considered that it might not be good for people with anxiety so I'm glad you brought that up as now I won't suggest it for my own organization. 

This is money matters after all, and many people budget their philanthropy and carefully select the organizations they support. We have heard feedback from many folks over the 10+ years I've been on this board that they don't want their organization doing united way campaigns, etc at the office where they push for 100% participation with a gift of any size. If something works for your organization, great, but I can certainly see a valid reason why some people might not appreciate the fun committee solely focusing on diaper drives, holiday gift trees, back to school backpacks, etc. Those are all fabulous causes but some people might not want to participate. If they don't, they run the risk of being judged by their colleagues. 

I totally get it! My point was only that it works for us as a morale booster, not that it would work for everyone. FWIW, our agency does do United Way, and I don't like that. How's that for contradictory? Lol. They do the push for 100%, and lots of people don't appreciate it. Food banks and the like are great for us, though, and there's never any pressure to contribute or even knowledge of who brought what.

This is one aspect of what we do for fun, which cannot cost our org anything since we're government.

[genet313]

Aug 9, 2016 13:52:31 GMT -5 milsaroo said:

Aug 9, 2016 10:08:37 GMT -5 steph96 said:

I absolutely agree on not making me spend my own money (includes bringing in food) or making me spend my personal time doing stuff.

I also hate how almost all of the "fun" stuff happens during the busiest time of month. Sorry, but I don't really want to sit in a conference room with people that I hate to decorate pumpkins when I need to be doing my work!

This is pretty much why I don't like being part of the committee... It's taking time away from doing actual work by planning "fun" activities.

And there's approximately 60 people in my department. You know there's no such activity that everyone will enjoy (besides leaving early).

Agreed, which is why I keep coming back to doing something with store-bought food and non-forced participation.

DH's department has bagels every Friday...and they've since graduated to hot egg sandwiches as well as bagels.  It's a huge hit.  It doesn't take much time out of anyone's day to get a bagel, you can eat together and be social if you choose, or go back to your desk and eat alone if you chose.  

We do happy hours once every few months at my firm, and it's also popular.  Put on some music, get some alcohol and store-bought snacks and hang out for 15 minutes.  Easily done. 

[followyourarrow]

Our's is called the employee satisfaction committee. Recently the directors all made us pancakes, it was fairly cheap and fun. A favorite is food drive for the local food bank and we have a traveling trophy for number of pounds by department. Recently there was a blood drive and you could stay on the clock to participate. Obviously no one was forced to participate and some directors offered small incentives to their teams. The only thing that made it awkward was when we had an all staff meeting the following day and it was reported that 8 people were turned away and the CEO wanted to know why.

[LoveTrains]

Aug 9, 2016 14:39:42 GMT -5 followyourarrow said:

Our's is called the employee satisfaction committee. Recently the directors all made us pancakes, it was fairly cheap and fun. A favorite is food drive for the local food bank and we have a traveling trophy for number of pounds by department. Recently there was a blood drive and you could stay on the clock to participate. Obviously no one was forced to participate and some directors offered small incentives to their teams. The only thing that made it awkward was when we had an all staff meeting the following day and it was reported that 8 people were turned away and the CEO wanted to know why.

OH that's hugely awkward. I tried to donate blood at work once and couldn't because my blood pressure was too high and it was super embarrassing and awkward. Also I was just having a stressful day, my pressure in general is fine. 

[ladyk]

Are they giving you some sort of budget for this "fun"? We get like $2/per month per person and we have less than 25 people in our department, in two states. So anything else has to come out of someone's pocket. We just had a meeting with the higher-ups about an annual survey our company takes and they were going on and on about scheduling fun into the day and we need to engage our folks, etc, etc. Um, okay. What my folks want isn't something that can come from me (I do everything I can on stuff under my control) but it has to come from higher-ups and we're in corporate America so that's a no-go in a go situation.

Good luck.